Sport is made for betting

Change this week at Ladbrokes with a major internal reshuffle (a cynic might say of the deckchairs on the Titanic). Relatively new chief exec Richard Glynn has brought in several fresh faces and moved a few old names on. Definitely out with the old, in with the new. Asian bookie 12Bet who have major sponsorships with Sevilla in La Liga and snooker tournaments, will be acquired by Asian online casino and poker firm, AsianLogic , in a move thought to complement their existing range of products. Betfair's share price has taken a predictable tumble, dropping from the peak of around £15.50 during conditional trading to the current £13.95 as smaller shareholders wish to cash in their chips. No reason to think the price will fall much further, it was always going to surge briefly as the public got excited about it. Tabcorp held a record $107m on Tuesday's Melbourne Cup, buoyed by the form of superstar stallion So You Think, who started as the shortest favourite in decades. He...

A blow to keeping corruption out of racing, or vindication for a jockey who did nothing more than discuss his rides with blokes who punt, and then made their own independent decisions? Leading Australian jockey Danny Nikolic was charged over several races where his rides were unplaced and the horses in question were laid for substantial amounts by punters he regularly spoke to. Nikolic cleared of serious charges In dismissing the four charges, RADB chairman Judge Russell Lewis said the board was not satisfied that Nikolic had communicated with the associates or some of them about the chances of his mounts resulting in the associates making lay bets outside their normal betting parameters. "The evidence relied upon by the stewards as a basis for drawing an inference that Nikolic communicated the chances of his mounts raises suspicions about what transpired," Judge Lewis said. "But harbouring suspicions about his conduct is not sufficient to prove the charges." One th...

Too many tidbits, not enough time for full-length articles... The mystery in the Betfair/Danny Nikolic/Neville Clements inquiry in Australian racing gets deepers with professional punter Neville Clements being warned off all Australian racecourses indefinitely , no doubt as a refusal to share phone records which will incriminate him. There is plenty more to come in this story. Let's hope if a conviction is warranted, then it is reached, unlike the farcical scenes of the Fallon case in the UK a few years back. It's March, so Italian football is looking dodgy again. On the weekend we had the Chievo-Cagliari boat race which went as planned, but last night a Serie B match was taken off the board by all and sundry but then didn't go as planned. All the money was for a draw between Vicenza and Crotone, but the away team won 2-0, even with 10 men! Did the authorities tell them they were being watched very closely, or was it the case of a few punters trying to spoof the market and ...